Software

[SRBeef]

Just went and looked at my Ranch Manager again. There is an icon in the toolbar for income and exspenses. They have a profit and loss chart in this part.

There may be an icon there, as there is a place in Cattlemax, for income and expenses.

I think those are mostly so you can assign some specific costs (like a vet bill or sale of an animal?) to a specific animal. Or make a note of general expenses such as feed, hay, etc.

But these are NOT really accounting programs. There is no checkbook register nor way to assign some types of items such as assets, or enter a loan, or land value, nor wage expenses, etc. An accounting program, or use a for real accountant, is necessary if you really want to know how you are doing.

Running a cattle operation without an accounting program or accountant is like having a baseball game without a scoreboard, or worse if your living depends on the cattle. But you need accounting, in my opinion, even if this is just a "hobby". You need a scoreboard.

 

[rockridgecattle]

i got a trial for ranch manager and cattle max. Both are sitting on my desk waiting to be tried. For the accounting side though I use Ag Expert put out by FCC. It is Canadian based. It can be as simple or as complex as you like. If you have off farm income, it tracks it as well. Separate bank accounts, different enterprises, net worth, Gst and PST based on province, and agri stability reports. I like the enterprise splits because at a click of the mouse, i can see which enterprise, be it cattle, honey, or chickens is profitable or a loss. It fills out your GST report, PST report, does everything but the taxes itself. You can reconcile bank statements, credit card statements,etc.
It took me about 12 hours of steady work to get the program set to ready, but i went into alot of inventory tracking for the Ag Stablity program. This included all assets, multiple bank accounts, inventory entering and tracking, CAIS set up, enterprise splits, as well as coding as per the farm income statements. Once it is set to ready, you go about doing it and each year end everything gets transfered. Along with openning a new year you can set up budgets based on past years income and expenses.
FCC also makes a program that works along side called Field Manager. It is more for the grain side of things. Several have asked for them to do a cattle program, but that has yet to happen
Terrific support.

 

[I luv herfrds]

SR I NEVER said this was an accounting program.
What a person can do is enter in their income and expenses. When you click on the loss/profit tab in the income/expenses part it will show you what has been entered.
You enter in the date, item, amount and it will keep track. You can also enter in the amount you get from the sale of the calves, cows and bulls.

We enter all this data automatically into our books anyway, so I normally don't mess with it.

 

[Terrell]

Most cattle software programs, including our CattleMax, only maintain income and expense logs. The primary benefit of keeping this information in a herd management program is that it can be linked to specific cattle or people.

Basic income and expense logging works fine for producers who just need to keep the information for tax records. However, for producers who are business-oriented and plan to perform financial analysis, the data must be exported to a real accounting software like QuickBooks. I always try to encourage producers to perform the financial analysis since the already went to the time and trouble of collecting the data, but some do not necessarily want the lights turned on

There was a good discussion on accounting software last fall here on Cattle Today at http://www.cattletoday.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=51119 that may be helpful.